Grzegorz Kurec ( be, Григорий Курец, lt, Grigas Kurecas, 5 May 1868 in Shipka,

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...

- 6 March 1942 in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, Germany) was a Polish

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

, architect and builder of

ian origins. He created one of the biggest paper factories of the time -

Grigiškės Grigiškės (; pl, Grzegorzewo) is a town in the Vilnius city municipality, Lithuania. It is an industrial town with AB Grigiškės, a major paper factory built in 1923. Grigiškės is situated on both banks of the Vokė river, south from the r ...

. He was also founder of

city. His son Włodzimierz was a

pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

and

rally driver Rally is a wide-ranging form of motorsport with various competitive motoring elements such as speed tests (often called ''rally racing),'' navigation tests, or the ability to reach waypoints or a destination at a prescribed time or average speed. ...

Background

Kurec was born in 1868 in a family of Belarusian farmers in Shipka village. As a child, he was interested in mechanics and worked as an apprentice and as a metalworker in some factories of Vilnius. He gained experience at the Putilov Company and then with private orders.

Career

In the autumn of 1925, he opens Grigiškės. It could produce 5 tons of paper per year. The factory was nationalized in 1940 when the Soviets came. All of Kurec's property was evaluated as being worth 8 million

litas The Lithuanian litas (ISO currency code LTL, symbolized as Lt; plural ''litai'' (nominative) or ''litų'' (genitive) was the currency of Lithuania, until 1 January 2015, when it was replaced by the euro. It was divided into 100 centų (genit ...

External links

History of the Kurec's factory

History of factory on the official site

W. Wolkanowicz's article about Grzegorz Kurec son.
(pol.) 1868 births 1942 deaths {{Poland-bio-stub